Children are more susceptible to interference from competing sounds than adults. In the laboratory, children's increased susceptibility to auditory masking is evident for both tone detection and speech recognition tasks, especially when the background maskers are complex and unpredictable. The long-term objective of this line of research is to understand how children develop the ability to hear signals in the presence of unpredictable and complex competing background sounds. The specific aims of this proposal are (1) to characterize changes in susceptibility to auditory masking across the age range of 5-13 years and (2) to determine if children can benefit from cues indicating when in time to listen for a sound of interest. The proposed studies will use both tonal and speech stimuli to determine changes in susceptibility to masking across childhood and the benefit associated with the proposed cue for both types of stimuli. The central hypothesis for the proposed research is that young children are more susceptible to masking under complex listening conditions than older children or adults, and that this increased masking can be offset by providing a cue that indicates when in time to listen for the signal. The proposed research will increase our knowledge of how children listen in natural settings where multiple and unpredictable sound sources are often present, such as classrooms. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Children are more susceptible to interference from competing sounds than adults. The proposed research will increase our knowledge of how children's susceptibility to competing sounds changes across childhood and if children can benefit from a cue that indicates when in time to listen for a sound of interest. This work is important because children learn language in natural listening environments that are noisy and unpredictable.